Wizard
The arcane hero relies on his vast store of occult knowledge to survive. He is the evoker, the abjurer, the conjurer, the artificer, and he controls the very forces of the cosmos to do his bidding. __TOC__ Wizards Class Features All Wizards, regardless of their other Class Features, gain the following proficiencies and abilities upon choosing the Wizard Theme: The wizard gains training with blades and bludgeons. The wizard is does not gain training in any armor. The wizard can cast arcane spells and metamagic using the Arcana skill, and may dispel appropriate conditions as an automatic reaction at the end of each of his turns. His magic damage bonus is equal to his Intelligence modifier. The wizard gains a spellbook, within which he stores the formulas for his spells. At level 0, his spellbook contains a number of Rank 1 spells equal to his Arcana proficiency. * Whenever the wizard takes a short rest, he may prepare one spell of an appropriate rank from his spellbook for each of his available per-encounter feat uses, using an appropriate material component to infuse with the energy of his spell. He may cast each of those spells once during the next encounter as a per-encounter feat of that spell's rank. * Whenever the wizard takes an extended rest, he may prepare one spell for each of his available daily feat uses from his spellbook, using an appropriate material component to infuse with the energy of his spell. He may cast each of those spells once during the next day as a daily feat. The wizard gains training in Arcana and Perception. * The wizard chooses two role-based class features, gaining the skill proficiencies and metamagics of those class features. * The wizard chooses one school of magic class feature, gaining that school's bonuses and metamagic. * The wizard chooses two at-will spells that are available to him based on his class features. * At level 0, the wizard may cast one Rank 1 spell per day, and may cast one class metamagic per encounter. The Essential Wizard This chapter presents many different options for creating an Arcane Hero, also known as a Wizard. Many of these options can seem daunting, so the following builds have been distilled down into the essential necessities. Each of these builds has been constructed using the Essential Array ability scores, choosing abilities and adding the +2 racial ability bonuses so that the final ability scores become 18/16/14/12/11 regardless of the character’s race. This ensures that the character begins play with their abilities optimized for that class’s rigors, and won’t find themselves particularly hampered compared to another player. Pyromancer (Essential Evoker) Warmage (Essential Abjurer) Necromancer (Essential Conjurer) Alchemist (Essential Artificer) Arcanist (Essential Wizard) The Complete Wizard If you feel like delving into the nuts and bolts of character design, you can skip past the Essential builds and construct a Complete Wizard, which takes significantly more work but will result in a vision that is uniquely your own. There are four possible Complete Wizard starting points: Evoker (Arcane Striker) The Evoker focuses her arcane knowledge into raw displays of magical power, summoning lightning bolts and fireballs to devastate her enemy from afar. Abjurer (Arcane Defender) The Abjurer focuses her arcane knowledge into shielding her allies from harm and deflecting her enemies’ blows, directing her opponents’ energies in harmless directions. Conjurer (Arcane Controller) The Conjurer focuses his arcane knowledge into summoning and command. Artificer (Arcane Leader) The Artificer focuses his arcane knowledge into protecting his allies and enhancing their weapons and equipment. Wizard (Arcane Generalist) You can easily choose to create a generalist Wizard as a starting character, simply by picking Role-based Class Features from two different Roles. This will dilute your ability to fulfill each Role, but allows much more flexibility during character creation. Schools of Magic